Chechen election called 'a real farce'

[dArKeR]

MOSCOW — Like everyone else living in his war-torn republic, Akhmed Kadyrov has no doubt who will be Chechnya's president after an election is held there Sunday.''Let's assume I will be elected. I have no doubts about it. Neither do you,'' he told a laughing audience at a rally yesterday.

Mr. Kadyrov has reason to be confident. The vote tomorrow to choose Chechnya's next leader is a formality.

Mr. Kadyrov's win by a large margin was decided long ago, not by ordinary Chechens, but in Moscow, where this election has been micromanaged from afar by bureaucrats inside the Kremlin.

Tomorrow's vote is supposedly the final push in an effort by Russian President Vladimir Putin and his advisers to bring an end to four years of war and more than a decade of anarchy in the country's breakaway southern region.

With a Russian presidential election less than six months away and public opinion now firmly against the war, Mr. Putin needs the Chechen vote to go smoothly. And he seems to believe he needs Mr. Kadyrov, whom he appointed Chechnya's interim president in 2000, to win.

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